I Know You’re Busy But…
February 4th, 2009
It’s inevitable. I’m sure many a reader can relate with this too. In our line of work, usually when we’re tasked to work on a specific project, whether it’s something “hugely” important as cleaning a laser printer to replacing a dead hard drive in the laptop backup server to ensuring there’s enough toilet paper in the restrooms, we generally get a “While you’re here…” when in the midst of working on what I previously mentioned. (Actually, this might be one of those ideas for a roving weekly feature since I probably get three or of these a day!) While working on a printer, I got hit with an “Ummm, while you’re here…” which went something like this:
Me: :::waiting for the printer to process its cleaning page (yeah, I get paid to watch this):::
Enduser: “Ummm, while you’re here, can you answer a ‘quick’ question for me?” (I emphasize “quick” here because a typical enduser’s version of “quick” might be anything from “Do you know where I can get one of those rubber feet thingys that fell off the bottom of my laptop?” to “I need help adding a shopping cart on my website. Is that hard?”)
Me: :::starting to feel a little queasy::: “Um, sure. What’s up?”
Enduser: “Well, I have this computer at home which has a bunch of files on it but I’m not sure which files I should keep and which ones I should delete. Can you tell me?”
Me: :::thinking evil thoughts and grinning wickedly inside::: “Hmmmm, I would start with the files within the ‘Windows’ directory. There’s a specific folder in there called “system32″ that can be deleted since it contains a lot of unecessary files that take up a lot of space on your hard drive.”
SCREEEEEECHHHH!!!! Wait a sec…scratch that…backup…rewind… Actually, that was just a test to see if you, dear readers, were still with me. What I REALLY said was:
Me: “Hmmmm, you’re asking me if I should know which files on YOUR computer to delete or not? [Sounds familiar? You might be thinking of this post. Yeah, kinda the same tactic but I was a bit gentler with this particular enduser due to some unrelated circumstances that happened to this person I won't mention here. See, I do have a heart!] I’m sorry, but I don’t have a clue. That’s like asking me what bills you should pay or not.”
Enduser: “Yeah, good point. Okay, I’ll see if I can figure it out.”
Now, I did suggest to this enduser that they might pick up a cheap flash drive to save any files they are considering deleting just in case they may need them again in the future. I was profusely thanked for that, and for “working on” the printer (remember that?) before going on my merry way while grabbing some Hershey kisses upon departure.
